I had a bit of a tough call this weekend; quite aside from finally catching the crappy cold-type-lurgy bullshit that's been floating around which rendered me asleep at inconvenient times and unable to breathe and therefore insomniac at the appropriate times, I did something I haven't done for a big, Hollywood studio movie in quite some time; I turned it off. I tend to try and soldier through these things, purely because I'm on the mule side of stubborn at the best of times, but despite outward appearances, I'm always willing to give movies or people the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that they don't turn out to be complete turkeys or horrendous douche bags. I am often disappointed. Usually though, I'll quite happily gripe about it until the cows come home which is at very least cathartic and occasionally diverting for at least me, possibly even other people. I try and stick it out in cinemas because of the crippling costs involved, but with Netflix, I don't have quite the same pressure.
So it was, feeling ill and sorry for myself, I dug into the bountiful offerings the little red and white app was chucking at me through emails I am 100% convinced I opted out of and settled on Passengers with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Now I'm not going to labour on too much but this is your classic "guy in hyper-sleep en route to an off-world colony is woken up to soon and shenanigans ensue" Honestly, I'm not sure how far in I got, but apparently not long because I was bored out of my tiny mind long before any of the interesting stuff I just read on IMDb happened, although it seemed to mention the main protagonist's grandchildren which is unintentionally super-creepy because mathematically speaking there are a whole bunch of questions that can only be answered by crimes against genetics and incestuous red necks in space is not a good look for anyone. Not inspiring.
I did however manage to catch a Netflix-clusive that on the surface looked like enjoyable bollocks and that I can confirm was indeed both of those things. Well worth catching if you enjoy action movies but have no regard for things such as finesse or polished scripts, is Polar.
Right off the bat, Polar is trying to let you know that it's down with the cool kids; the typeface of the credits flicker between gothic and "300" style fonts which is probably impressive if you've never seen what a good credit sequence looks like (Se7en, for example) and all the characters get their own little calling card like in Suicide Squad. It's one of a raft of movies about assassins which is almost becoming a genre in it's own right. This lands somewhere between Killing Gunther and John Wick, but much much closer to the former despite pretensions towards being the latter. All you really need to know about the tone of this movie is served directly to you in the form of Johnny Knoxville's opening scene cameo and his flatteringly (and thankfully hidden behind shorts) rendered digital erection. It's not quite Jackass levels of inane, but it's fairly close at points.
Mads Mikkelsen is a retiring hitman whose bosses owe him $8 million if he manages to make the 14 days to his 50th birthday, so naturally they decide to have him bumped off and keep the cash. So far so good. We get a team of young whippersnappers tracking him down to get the job done while he wiles away his days in a cabin failing dismally to fit in to small town life. Needless to say, it doesn't all go to plan but I won't spoil it for you. It seems like it's meant to be darkly comic; accidental dog shootings, poorly judged firearm gifts and a lesson in correct Kukri form to a class of 9 year olds all have the potential to be tongue-in-cheek funny, but none of it really lands. Chief among those giant misses is the rotund form of Matt Lucas rocking his plummiest British accent as the bad guy; he somehow manages to be neither actually threatening or funny and just sets your teeth on edge every time he's on screen. The young assassin team are barely memorable as characters, being wild stereotypes as they are and even Mikkelsen is effective just an aging, cut-price John Wick clone.
It's not all bad. The set pieces are fun, and they have ramped up the violence to suitable levels; it isn't Mandy by any means but I've come to accept that not every movie is. There are lashings of blood, limbs folded to improbable angles and the wet crunch of tearing lettuces in the foley room all over the show. It's real problem is that it isn't anything particularly new that hasn't already been done better by Taken, The Equalizer or John Wick in varying degrees. Deep down I think they realised that towards the end , so they've attempted to Shyamalan in a twist at the finale where it simply wasn't needed, also possibly to try and barter for a sequel. I can't say it was completely horrible because all things considered (well maybe not ALL things) it wasn't even remotely as bad as Killing Gunther, which still occasionally pops into my head and makes me sad. At least I made it past the first 45 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment